The Martlet

The UVic Bookstore will provide an alternative to buying textbooks this fall — renting them.

Currently in the pilot phase, this program will provide a rental option for seven textbooks. UVic is the second university in Canada to have a textbook rental program on campus. The University of Toronto ran a small test program over the summer, which will be continuing this fall.

The courses which use the seven books in the rental pilot program are Anthropology 100, Astrology 101, Biology 321 and 360, Math 110 and 201 and Physics 112, 122 and 216.

Penny Draper, manager of the bookstore’s textbook department, said while the idea of renting textbooks is new in Canada, it’s popular in the United States.

“We’ve had general requests, ‘can you get the price of textbooks lower?’ so we thought this was one way we might be able to do that,” she said.

According to Draper, another motivation for introducing book rentals at UVic was the proliferation of online textbook rental companies.

“[With an online company] there’s shipping costs back and forth; you’re dealing with a third party that you don’t know,” she said. “We thought we’d like to be able to bring this home and run it ourselves, our own way, for our own students.”

The bookstore received partnership offers from some of these online companies, but declined them.

“We would prefer to manage it ourselves, we don’t want to get people involved in a company we don’t really know much about,” said Draper.

The books are rented for the duration of a course for between 50 per centand 60 per cent of the cost of the new book.

Currently, students require a credit card to rent textbooks, but Draper said a cash or debit system may be set up in the future for those without credit cards. The rental books are stored separately from other books and assigned serial numbers when they are rented out.

If a book is not returned, a processing fee will be added to the remainder of the cost of the book. However, students who drop a course before Sept. 20 can return the book and get the rental fee refunded, paying only the processing fee.

Draper said at present the cost of rental will be slightly higher than that of buying a new book and selling it back at the end of a course.

The bookstore offers 50 per cent of the new price on books it buys back from students, though how much students receive may depend on the condition and demand for the book.

“Rental is a bit more expensive, just a bit, than the potential buyback price, and the reason for that is, buyback is the students taking a risk, it might not be on for buyback,” said Draper. Books are only bought back if they are being used again in a course.

Students will also be paying higher taxes on rental books. The B.C. government offers a point of sale rebate on the provincial portion of the new 12 per cent Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on new textbooks, so they only carry a five per cent tax. By contrast, the full HST will apply to the rental fee.

“It’s the act of renting which is HST applicable,” explained bookstore director Jim Forbes.

While renting a textbook is still relatively expensive compared to buying used or doing buyback, Draper said the bookstore hopes to reduce the rental fee in the future.

“If we can have a rental pool of books that we can rent over and over again, obviously we don’t need to make a big amount of money on it because the same book keeps coming back,” she explained.

Draper plans to work with professors to identify textbooks which will be used for the same course over several years.

The bookstore will be using signage to alert students to the four options for acquiring textbooks: new books, used books, digital books (which cost about 40 per cent less than a new book) and rentals.

Used books are currently the cheapest option, because they have no tax charged and have the potential of being resold to bookstore at 50 per cent of the new price.

“That’s the option that everyone should be going for,” said Forbes. “People might not know about used books; they might think rental is the best option.”

However, Draper said some of the books currently being offered for rent are newly published, so they won’t be available used until next year.

The textbook rental program is likely here to stay.

“As long as some students are using it, I’m happy to run it,” said Draper. “[Unless] nobody returns their books or something awful happens...I don’t anticipate at this time pulling it.”

As the program continues and the bookstore is able to continue renting out the same books, rental prices may drop.

The bookstore will be running a survey later this fall directed at the students and professors in the courses using the rental books, as well as a potential broader survey asking all students how they feel about the rental option.

“We really are listening to students to direct the way we build this,” said Draper.

For more information on textbook rentals, including pricing information, visit uvicbookstore.ca